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Chapter Eighteen
Última actualización:
2026-01-04 02:00:51Selene:
I wake in pieces.Not broken—just scattered, like parts of me are returning at different speeds. Sensation comes first: warmth at my back, steady and solid; cool air brushing my face; the faint ache in my limbs that tells me I pushed far past endurance.Then sound. Breathing. Two rhythms, not one.I don’t open my eyes right away.The Axis hums beneath it all, low and altered. Not absent. Not raging.Integrated.The knowledge settles into me slowly, heavy and sobering. Whatever I did—whatever we did—rewrote something fundamental. The world didn’t end. The lattice didn’t shatter.But it changed.My chest tightens with something like grief.Rowan’s arm is around me, firm and protective even in sleep, his breath warm against my hair. Lucien is close too—I don’t need to see him to know that—his presence a cool, watchful line along my awareness, like a wall that hasn’t lowered yet.I
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Blood ,Fire and Frost Chapter Twenty-Four
Rowan POV:I don’t like fighting things I can’t smell.Steel has a scent. Blood does. Even magic leaves tracks if you know how to read them. But whatever the Ash Queen is using sits wrong in my senses—muted, filtered, like the air after a storm when the ground hasn’t decided what it wants to be yet.Which means someone made it that way.Lucien and I don’t speak as we move through the outer districts again, this time under heavier cover. No veils. No soft bending of attention. Just shadows, timing, and patience. Selene stayed behind—not because she isn’t capable, but because this part needs to be done without her gravity warping the room.That alone tells me how serious this is.“You feel it too,” I murmur as we pass beneath a collapsed archway.Lucien nods once. “Yes.”“Good,” I growl. “Because if you told me I was imagining it, I was going to break something.”Lucien’s mouth curves faintly. “Your insti
Blood ,Fire and Frost Chapter Twenty-Three
Selene POV:If I march into the outer districts as queen, the story writes itself before my boots touch the stones.Threatened monarch confronts rising rival.Crown crushes the people’s new hope.Power silences faith.They would chant it in the streets with the same mouths that once prayed for me.So I don’t go as queen.I go as woman.I dress plainly: dark wool, travel boots, hair braided tight and tucked beneath a scarf. No crown. No sigils. No visible authority. Lucien paints a quiet veil into the air around my presence, not hiding me completely, but softening the edges, bending attention away from recognition. A suggestion, not a spell that screams illusion.Rowan hates the plan so much I can taste it through the bond.“This is stupid,” he mutters, hands braced on the table in my chamber. “We should go in, take control, end it.”“That’s what they want,” I reply evenly, p
Blood ,Fire and Frost Chapter Twenty-Two
Selene POV:The first demand arrives as a petition.Wax-sealed, beautifully penned, respectful enough to make anger feel impolite. It’s delivered by a delegation of robed envoys who bow as if they’re offering reverence instead of obligation.“Your Majesty,” the lead envoy says, voice honey-smooth, “we come in the spirit of unity.”Unity, I’ve learned, is often a pretty word for obedience.Lucien stands a half-step behind my right shoulder, still as carved stone. Rowan is to my left, arms crossed, gaze fixed on the envoy like he’s deciding where to bury him.I take the parchment and skim.A request. A recommendation. A “framework.”They want a doctrine.They want me to define what’s allowed. What’s forbidden. Who may attempt bond resonance. Who must never.They want me to become the ruler of a thing I never meant to govern: intimacy as power.I fold the parchment slowly. “You
Blood ,Fire and Frost Chapter Twenty-One
Selene:The first ripple reaches us through rumor, not magic.It arrives folded into council reports and trade ledgers, carried by messengers who don’t realize they’re delivering something far more dangerous than news. No wards fail. No villages cry out.Instead, people begin trying.I hear about a border city where a priestess attempts to “anchor” her power through devotion alone. A warlord two regions east binds himself to three consorts, believing intensity will make him untouchable. A coven fractures when one of their own insists that desire is the missing key to ascension.None of them succeed.Some barely survive.The Axis hums when I read the reports — not alarmed, not urgent, but aware. Like a sea responding to distant storms.“This was inevitable,” Lucien says quietly, standing at my shoulder as I stare down at the parchment. “You demonstrated a principle. Others will attempt to reproduce it without understanding the architecture.”Rowan’
Blood ,Fire and Frost Chapter Twenty
Selene:Balance is not stillness.I learn that in the days after Brine Hollow, as the world settles into something that looks peaceful from the outside but hums with adjustment beneath the surface. The Axis has stopped reacting to my every breath. It listens now—truly listens—but it does not leap unless I call.That difference matters.I walk the citadel each morning without armor, without crown, bare hands brushing stone that no longer feels like it’s holding its breath around me. Servants bow, guards straighten, councilors watch me with careful eyes—but none of it pulls at me the way it once did.I am not suppressing anything.I am carrying it.Rowan walks at my left, Lucien at my right—not because I require escort, but because we have chosen a formation that feels… right. Intentional. Visible without being performative.“You’re quieter,” Rowan murmurs as we pass beneath the high arches of the eastern wing.
Blood ,Fire and Frost Chapter Nineteen
Selene:Recovery is not rest.I learn that quickly.My body regains strength in increments—enough to sit, then stand, then walk the length of my chamber without the room tilting—but my mind lags behind, snagging on memory the way cloth catches on thorns. Every time I close my eyes, I feel the echo of that moment when the bond answered fully, when the Axis bent and rewrote itself around my choice.It isn’t temptation that scares me.It’s familiarity.The ease with which power answered when I claimed it—how natural it felt to step into that depth. That is what I must learn to live with without letting it define me.Rowan brings me tea I don’t remember asking for. Lucien adjusts the wards to soften the ambient hum without dampening it completely. They move around me like gravity wells—present, careful, unassuming.I let them.That, too, is new.“I need to talk,” I say quietly, breaking the calm th
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